Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Mac Lab Report

Five Helpful Wares for the Mac

- 2002.04.11

As I've been writing these articles over the past year, I've benefited enormously from the many tips, hints, and suggestions from my readers. Sometimes this takes the form of features or functions I didn't know about in a piece of software I've reviewed. Often it is software I've never heard of suggested to solve a particular problem.

This week I present several of the best programs I've encountered due to reader suggestions. Each of these programs is easy enough to use in schools (and often is) but can also generate college or professional level work (and often does).

Graphing

From Dave Sopchak comes the tip for third party graphing software that is more versatile and easier to use than integrated spreadsheet graphing tools, look at Pro Fit, which can generate contour maps, 3D plots, curve fits, and more. Even better, it is available in a mildly disabled trial version in flavors for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 on PPC, and 68 K Macs with and without FPU's. That ought to cover just about all of us here at Low End Mac! Dave says, "I wrote my Ph.D. thesis using AppleWorks and Pro Fit on OS X Public Beta."

BASIC

John Christie read one of my whiny articles about missing old fashioned BASIC interpreters and clued me in to METAL Basic, written by Marin Saric. Not only does this thing look like my old friend GFA BASIC for the Atari ST, it also sports an integrated compiler that lets you generate standalone programs. Even better, it's free. And still better, it runs in both OS 9 and OS X.

Those of you looking for a good BASIC interpreter for older machines should look no farther than Chipmunk BASIC. John said, " I don't know why you complain at all given that you know Chipmunk BASIC. It is as powerful as anything we had on the Apple II or Pet." You know what, John? You're right. That's the last time you'll hear me complain about it. My wife credits you with giving me a BGO (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious.)

Image Enhancement

I've been discovering the usefulness of image processing in my astronomy classroom over the past couple of years, and now I am learning about the National Institute of Health's Image program (commonly called NIH Image). This was originally a Mac-only program, although a Windows version is now available, as well as a Java-based version. This program is amazing. It can take a stack of images and animate them. Given a stack of images from a medical scanner, it can "slice" the stack in any direction and show cross sections not originally imaged. It can be used to analyze micrographs of cells. It can artificially colorize images and enhance faint detail. It can import raw data and convert it into images. It can provide graphs of the pixel values taken in any direction across an image. It has a macro system which allows you to write Pascal-like code to pre- or post-process images. It is used in professional settings all over the world, and the great thing about it is that it is free and runs on almost any color Mac with System 7.0 and higher.

Gradebook

Finally, from Clay Leeds comes an old-fashioned gradebook program called Gradekeeper. Among its other nice features, it is available as trialware, pay if you like, but it isn't disabled. The reasonable licensing fees allow you to use both Mac and Windows versions, and the files are interchangeable. For me, the way the assignments print out sideways at the tops of columns is really nice; I hate using lookup tables to find what assignment #4 was. I'm not happy with my current gradebook program, and I'll be giving this one a serious look for next year.

Anyway, thanks to these folks and to everyone else who writes in, because it lets me know the effort is appreciated and it helps me learn more in the process.

Jeff Adkins is a science teacher who isn't afraid to state his preferences in computing platforms. In his classroom he has everything from a beige All-in-One to a a G4 XServe, and they all work together nicely. He calls himself the "poster child for technology integration" in the classroom. He was the 2006 Outstanding Educator of the Year for the California Computer Using Educators (CUE) organization. He also maintains a site for astronomy teachers at www.AstronomyTeacher.com.

Recent Mac Lab Reports

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Mac Lab Report copyright © 2000-08 by Jeff Adkins. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.